Derealized April, 2025 & May 2025
This performance was a personal exploration of derealization— the unsettling feeling of unreality in everyday life, and the distorted perception of time, space, and self. Inspired by a surreal state of mind, I created my unique outfit with only two holes and decorated it with mirrors and beads.
The act of stepping into this unique outfit — letting it swallow me, hide me, and shape me — became a symbolic ritual of becoming unseen, disconnected, and yet oddly present. The ocean and the cold wind amplified the surreal mood. Although the final video is only four minutes long, the full experience from waking up at 5 a.m. to returning home at 9 a.m. felt like a dream. When I lay back in bed, it was the usual time I would be waking up. The contrast between these timelines gave me a lived experience of time-bending, as if I had stepped into an alternate layer of reality.
When preparing this performance, I drew inspiration from surrealism, as well as the philosopher Heidegger’s notion of Being-in-the-world. This performance was not a detached observation of dissociation — it was an immersion. I didn’t perform “about” unreality; I was unreality. My body, the cold, the outfit, the ocean — all of these were not separate elements but part of my thrownness into the world.
Invited by Amsterdam Alternative, I performed at the Amsterdam750 op de ring festival with a fabric installation I had created for it, continuing my exploration of derealization.
Corns & Chicken August, 2025
This performance was inspired by the food culture and marketplace traditions in China. In my home country, the proportion of vegetarians is very low, and throughout my childhood I often accompanied my grandmother to the local wet market. Scenes of peeling corn and slaughtering live chickens left a lasting impression on me. The act of killing and plucking a chicken is both bloody and visceral, yet for farmers and my grandmother’s generation, it was simply part of everyday life.
In this performance, I invited my grandmother to peel corn and pluck chicken feathers. These gestures are strikingly similar in form, but when enacted on vegetables versus animals, they create profoundly different perceptions and meanings. By juxtaposing the two, the work exposes the hidden processes behind food preparation and highlights the contrast in how we perceive “vegetables” and “meat.”
For my grandmother, these actions remain ordinary and instinctive routines. For me—as the initiator, documenter, and viewer—the cruelty of slaughter is difficult to accept. For the audience, witnessing this performance may force a confrontation with the realities usually concealed by the food industry and consumer culture, prompting them to reconsider their eating habits and the sanitized, neatly packaged produce and meat found in supermarkets.
Seesaw Dining June, 2025
- A conceptual dining ritual
This specially designed seesaw table reveals the invisible tensions of shared meals—hesitation, rhythm, and balance. Two participants sit opposite each other, eating simple food in nature. Thoughts like "Am I eating too fast?" or "Should I wait for them?" become audible. The experience redefines our relationship with food, the act of eating, and the person we share the moment with.